True Colour Of Blood

1. Unlike a zillion other players out there today, you are not at all new to the now trendy guitar drone/noise/ambient scene—in fact, in your website bio you talk about playing guitar for over 20 years and enjoying the challenge of synth-less ambient—assuming that you can play many different styles, what inspired you to go atmospheric? other specific players? also, what do you think of the new and burgeoning web-based scene w/ guitar droniacs such as Aidan Baker, Fear Falls Burning, Paul Bradley, Seconds in Formaldehyde to name a few?

Yeah, I’ve been playing guitar since I was fifteen. I started out playing hardcore and metal in the early 80s and then kind of moved into a sort of “indie” guitar sound. What inspired me to go atmospheric would probably be “Loveless” by My Bloody Valentine. Also, Flying Saucer Attack, Spacemen3, early Pink Floyd, Windy & Carl, Bowery Electric, etc. I just loved the fact that people were stretching the guitar to get different sounds. Around 1996 I started messing around with some ideas that I had and bought a 4-track and just started recording this really heavy, droney guitar stuff for myself because I wanted to hear things that I didn’t know existed. I didn’t even know there was “ambient” music but I had that sound in my head and wanted to get it out on tape. So it went from a real thick, heavy, monotonous drone to more atmospheric and darker over the years. As far as new players, I honestly haven’t heard too much. Partially because I’d rather not be influenced by hearing what other people are doing in that sort of “genre” and also because I really don’t listen to ambient music too much. I’d rather throw some T. Rex or The Jam on the turntable. I did hear someone yesterday just cruising around on the internet and I could have sworn it was TCOB. It was weird because it sounded exactly like something that I would record. It was kind of cool.

2. Your new record is a HUGE statement that TCOB is more than just back but still pushing the envelope of ambient music. It sounds like there’s a real freedom in your playing here—like you are fully in touch with what you want to do without any constraints (SOO many ambient records reek of constant self-editing/studio tweeking but not yours which is very refreshing).

I didn’t feel inspiration to record or play on a consistent basis. There would be a few days here and there then nothing for six or nine months and then I’d feel inspired again to record for a few days and then maybe four months would go by without playing or recording. I wasn’t interested in recording something that I felt I recorded a few years ago. I wanted to get some new sounds and ideas but it’s really hard to do that given the limitations of what I do so a lot of times you’re repeating what you’ve done before. But I did find some ways of doing some new stuff on this release. There are elements of dub that I really love. Some glitches/fucked up moments that I think are cool and just straight ahead droney ambient. I’d add that I think the best way to go about recording; at least for me is to not care what people think, not to record for other people but to record for yourself. My early stuff I was just recording for myself to listen and didn’t think that anyone else would hear it or if they did there’s no way they would get it. So when you get to a point where you know there are people who are going to buy a CD from you, you do sort of self edit and wonder “are people going to like this?” and I’ve found that the pieces I’ve recorded where I’m sure no one is going to like it or get it are the most popular ones. So for you kids just starting out playing ambient guitar, let that be a lesson.

3. Where does the title “All Of The True Things I’m About To Tell You Are Lies” come from? I mean it’s not particularly subtle, but very intriguing as you are using the first person to make a statement about how religion corrupts. Is this a commentary on the world today? If so, does the holy book on the cover represent both the bible and the koran ?

All Of The True Things I’m About To Tell You Are Lies came from an early Kurt Vonnegut book. I guess there’s some deeper meaning behind it but mostly I just thought it would make a cool album or song title. For the most part song titles really mean nothing to me. Just random things that I find interesting. I did play up the CD cover and make it sort of a statement about religion I guess. People can interpret the cover and the title how they want so it is and it isn’t a “holy book” if that makes sense. For me, my de-conversion out of Christianity, the artwork is not such a subtle statement because I know what that “black book” represents to me and what the words written on it mean. You can find lies masquerading as truth in many books so I didn’t want to make an open attack on any single religion but I’m sure people will read into it what they want.

4. There are a lot of tracks with clearly political statements. But what intrigues the most is: “Once was blind but now I’m deaf” — is this a reflection of your age? a growing cynicism towards a political system/media establishment that you have now come to accept as fundamentally and irreversibly broken?

“Once was blind but now I’m deaf” goes back to high school for me. Sitting in church with friends and messing around with song titles from a hymnal. There’s an old hymn “Once Was Blind But Now I See” and changing it to “now I’m deaf” is one of those funny titles that stuck with me over the years. I don’t want to turn this into a Christian bashing session but there’s a deeper meaning in that title for me now. The song “Illegally Jailed for Applauding the Violent Death of a World Leader” is pretty much a reflection of what you talked about. It started out as a fantasy about George W Bush being assassinated and the thought of thousands of people coming together to celebrate that in the streets and being arrested by the government. But a few days after I came up with the title General Augusto Pinochet died and it took on a deeper meaning because of all of the illegally jailed and disappeared in ….Chile….. So it changed from Bush to Pinochet for me. It’s one of the few song titles that actually has a meaning and represents something to me.

5. Finally, enough questioning about your political/social ethos, what are your plans for this record? Will you be doing some shows? How do you approach the live performance - improv or do you try to reproduce tracks from the record?

My main thing is I hope that people enjoy listening to the disc. I’d love to play some shows but booking shows and promotion is not my strong point at all so I don’t know how much of that will happen. It’s not that I don’t like to play out, I love to but I just don’t have the personality to promote myself the way I would need to. When I do play live it’s mostly an improv situation. There’s no way I can reproduce what’s on CD. I’ll have some ideas that I’ll work with but I improv around those ideas - Gears Of Sand

When we think about “guitar players”, we are misled by
the very traditional concept of the “rock” guitarist
playing riffs and solos… Wrong!
There is a parallel universe where talented musicians like Eric Kesner use guitars (and nothing else…) to build dense and flowing streams of sound.
Dark Ambient of the finest kind, where monstrously dark drones meet touching melodies; music that will project you into an unknown universe of reverberating sound-layers…
Eibon Records

“Dark-ambient perfection. Excellent and perfect”
Manifold Records

“Kesner’s work here represents a continuum of enigmatic pieces out of the Dark Ambient realm”
Stars End

“A brilliant work with mystical properties and one of the best releases of the year”
Ambient.us

“(Absence)” is a mature and involving work that captivates and invokes a deep and reflective beauty”
Static Signals

“Quality work by an intriguing new artist”
The Ambient Review

“The fact that Eric Kesner creates all his soundscapes with guitar is amazing”
Cornerstone Magazine

“There is a hazy stillness and guarded passivity to the tracks, as if staring out into a grey landscape waiting for something to appear on the horizon”
Worm Gear

- Various

Playing now is “All of the True Things I’m About to Tell You Are Lies” by True Colour of Blood. From the information to hand it was released in 2008 on Gears of Sand and as to why it’s taken this long to reach me … well, I have no idea. To business: TCOB is actually Eric Kesner from Virginia, US. For one and a half decades he has performed and recorded what might be called ambient or dark ambient sounds of music using just his guitar (+ efx). The result has ended up on a handful of albums plus appearances on myriads of compilations. Even though “All of the True…” isn’t all new it’s at least the most recent album by TCOB. It’s ten tracks lasting for almost 80 minutes, each track spanning between 3 and 17 minutes. The music is minimalistic, it’s dark and it’s ambient. On all tracks but ‘Once was Blind but Now I’m Deaf” the sounds comes softly sneaking at you, asks for your attention, in no way the amplifier is turned to 11, it’s more like 2 or 3. Each track has a dronish approach with very slow changing while the tune goes on. It need some time to establish within your senses, so, give it that time. This is not music for every moment of your life but when you’re in that particular mood, it’s really really good. - Terrascope Magazine (UK)